


Snow Country

by SaintOfLostCauses



Series: Snow Monsters [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hakuba cares but don't catch him admitting it, M/M, Pre-Slash, kid is the king of flashy entrances even in death, magic is a dirty word for Shinichi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 12:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12531512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintOfLostCauses/pseuds/SaintOfLostCauses
Summary: In the light of day, with the comforting warmth of a thick winter coat and plush green scarf, last night feels like a dream. Logically, Shinichi should just dismiss it as such and move on. Focus on catching the men responsible for putting him in the situation to begin with. But he can still feel the boy’s cold, gloved hands against his skin like an echo, like a whisper.





	Snow Country

**Author's Note:**

> As with the previous story in this series, the major character death is more of a plot device than any real tragedy. Or at least, Kid doesn't seem to be letting it stop him any.

They keep him at the hospital overnight to ensure that there aren’t any complications, but Shinichi is standing back in the lot the very next day; wrapped up tight against the cold, the sounds of the park a distant, steady thrum.

In the light of day, with the comforting warmth of a thick winter coat and plush green scarf, last night feels like a dream. Logically, Shinichi should just dismiss it as such and move on. Focus on catching the men responsible for putting him in the situation to begin with. But he can still feel the boy’s cold, gloved hands against his skin like an echo, like a whisper. A whisper that builds louder and louder in his ears the longer he stares at the stark white expanse in front of him in search of an answer, until it nearly manages to drown out the park entirely.

The only answer that manages to come to him after nearly going blind from the reflection of the sun off the snow, is the memory of those chilled fingers skating across his ribs, the numbers that they traced out against his skin… what were they again?

“One, four, one…” He can’t remember the last number for the life of him, had been too distracted by the sudden approach of lights and sounds breaking through the silence and stillness of the moment to translate that gentle pressure into a number. Frustration grates at him. At the poor timing of his rescuers, at the obtuseness of the clues from his interloper (at the fact that he wants to exchange those two designations in his head), at himself for pretending to believe in any of this.

Shinichi grits his teeth against the pounding sensation that’s started to build in his head like staccato beats in a count of one… four… one…

A soft, trilling _coo_ has Shinichi jerking his gaze back up from where they had come to rest on his shoes without him noticing, settling instead on the spot he had been laying last night (or as near as he can approximate), where two pure white doves now sit in the disturbed snow. Watching him.

He glares back at them in lieu of anyone or anything else for him to blame for his current predicament. They coo again in perfect stereo, not a single feather out of place or rustled wing, even as he takes a vaguely threateningly step towards them. And then proceeds to feel immediately foolish for his behavior, of course. He’s clearly more shaken up by his experience than he first thought, if he’s trying to pick a fight with a pair of birds.

“Maybe I should just go home.” He says with a weary sigh, but finds himself taking another step forward instead, one step closer to the doves. There’s no denying that they’re behaving strangely, and while he admittedly doesn’t know _much_ about birds outside of the clinical details of most common scavengers, he’d be willing to bet that they’re trained, rather than wild.

But trained by _who_ , that was the question.

There are stories, Shinichi knows, of pets surviving their owners and returning to the place they died over and over again, to wait for their return. As unbelievable as spirits and yuki onna are, the coincidence of the dove’s placement now is even more unlikely, just by a simple game of numbers. Unless, of course, the men that had attacked Shinichi last night made a habit of using this lot for their business, in which case the likelihood of someone else dying in the same place he nearly had increased exponentially.

Shinichi can’t help feeling sorry for the doves if that’s the case. They would probably keep returning to this place until they died as well. No satisfaction, no relief, no answers. Right now, he can honestly empathize. At least _he_ can walk away.

So why isn’t he then?

“Why couldn’t you be ravens or something?” Shinichi grumbles under his breath in resignation as he closes the rest of the distance between him and the doves and crouches in front of them with nary a ruffled feather of reaction. There’s something almost indignant in the small black eyes staring back at him though, he swears. “It’s not like I have anything against doves.” He says with a defensiveness he can’t quite manage to tamp down. “But ravens can at least _talk_ , so I’d be feeling a little less stupid trying to hold a conversation with one than I do right now,”

No answer from the doves, obviously.

Shinichi sighs again, dropping his chin to rest against his chest and talking into his scarf, voice muffled. “Not that it would do me any good, you still wouldn’t be able to answer any of my questions, would you?”

With his face half buried in his scarf, Shinichi doesn’t manage to see one of the doves move, but the overwhelming stillness of the lot (like a blanket that’s fallen over him, and he can’t even remember when he stopped hearing the sounds of the park nearby) makes the soft whisper of wings in the air reverberate in his ears clearly.

Looking up reveals that one of the doves has taken a small hop towards him, set so close to one of his knees that Shinichi can almost imagine he can feel the faint brush of feathers against his skin. The phantom touch reminds him all to clearly of the boy’s fingers last night. He shakes his head to clear it and focuses on the bird staring up at him in clear expectation. “ _Can_ you answer my questions?” Shinichi finds himself asking slowly, mystified, not quite as disbelieving as he knows he should be at this point.

A single coo in response from the dove closest to him.

He can’t believe he’s doing this. “I don’t suppose you belong to a guy about my age that wears a lot of white and likes to talk in circles, do you?”

Two excitable doves sounds now, and the second dove hops forward to settle next to his other knee, even going a step further than the other to nuzzle briefly at his clothed leg.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Shinichi says with unavoidable good humor. “Can you tell me who he is?” No answer. He hadn’t really expected one, but it hadn’t hurt to try. Or, at least, no more than his pride, but that was already on its last leg at this point and he can’t really bring himself to care. “Or what happened to him?” Nothing. “How about the fourth number, do you know that at least?” He asks with admittedly a touch of desperation; certain that he’s going to be greeted with silence again, that this whole venture is just that final piece of evidence that he’s finally lost it.

Except.

There’s a sudden explosion of motion and sound as both doves take to the air simultaneously, sending Shinichi backwards into a messy sprawl in the snow with a small, white index card resting on his chest.

He doesn’t remember seeing the notecard on either bird before, but there’s nowhere else it could have come from really, and when he turns the card over to find only the word ‘TWO’ printed plainly on the other side he just. Gives up. Gives in. “Fine, you _win_ , alright?” He announces forcefully to the empty lot as he pushes himself back to his feet and shoves the index card hastily into his back pocket.

There’s something deeply satisfying in the sound of the stiff paper crumpling with his carelessness. The very smallest of rebellions to feeling like he’s been led around by his nose by this guy so far.

“One four one two, is it? You want to play, let’s play.”

* * *

 

Despite his bold declaration in the lot, figuring out where to even start with only a name and a series of numbers proves to be a bit of a challenge. An initial search online of the numbers one, four, one, two, and every possible iteration he can think of for the name Kaito, fails to return anything of note together, while separate they both prove to be far too broad of a search for him to have any hope of sorting through on his own.

It’s desperation more than anything that leads to him trying with the term ‘kaitou’ instead, but the reward is instantaneous.

Phantom thief 1412, aka the Kaitou Kid, an infamous jewel thief known for giving advanced notice for his heists, elaborate and flamboyant shows _during_ said heists, and a strictly nonviolent modus operandi.

But what really catches his attention on his initial scan (there are thousands of information pages, news articles, and even _fan sites_ , and very few of them are any help at all) is a blurry photo of the thief snapped by an eager fan at a distance. The image is too dark and low quality for him to get any real read on the thief’s face, but his choice of costume is all too apparent: white suit, white cape, white top hat, white gloves, a stark flare of brightness against the pitch-black sky; Shinichi remembers dark, tousled hair speckled with snow rather than stiff white satin, but everything else manages to align quite nicely with his admittedly spotty memory.

Maybe nice isn’t quite the right word. Not with the lingering impression of red splashed so vividly across the crisp clean white as well.

He finds his answers to _that_ particular detail in an archive of old articles from a reputable news source, detailing the eye witness accounts of Kaitou Kid being shot out of the sky roughly a year ago, and just. Disappearing. No body, no heists, nothing.

Until now.

There’s little doubt in Shinichi’s mind that his mysterious rescuer and this notorious jewel thief are one and the same, the confluence of evidence is mostly circumstantial, but unignorable just the same. The only problem is (well, not the _only_ problem, but the most pressing one, at least) the further he digs into this whole mess, the more questions he has.

Going to the phantom thief for answers just doesn’t seem satisfying, even supposing his _can_ find the thief again, or that he would even provide a straightforward explanation if pressed. Nothing about the other boy – the… spirit – had been straightforward yet, anyway.

Unfortunately, there’s no denying that he’s already reached the limits of what he can dig up on his own through legal means, and even his burning curiosity isn’t enough to push him into looking into the illegal ones just yet. Not for what basically amounts to a cold case.

Cold case. Shinichi pulls a face at his computer screen as memory of a laugh that had sounded like ice and snow crackles through his mind like static. It’s not a phrase he thinks he’s going to repeat to the phantom thief, should he get the chance. Puns and the dead were never really a thing he thought he’d have to actively avoid, but life is full of strange turns, he supposes.

Shinichi lets this newest turn lead him to the police station. It’s a path he knows well, after all, even covered in a thick layer of snow.

The only issue is that once he reaches the station, Shinichi isn’t quite sure where to go next. Instinctively, he wants to ask to speak to Megure-keibu, but there’s no real guarantee that the man has anything to do with the Kaitou Kid case, cold or otherwise. Without a body, or any evidence at all of foul play save a handful of riled up witnesses, the case might have never made it to division one under Megure-keibu’s purview at all. Shinichi certainly doesn’t remember any mention of the event a year ago.

Kaitou Kid fell under the jurisdiction of a Nakamori-keibu, almost exclusively from what he’s managed to gather from his initial research and, unfortunately, Shinichi doesn’t have any sort of in with the man like he does Megure. He’s pretty sure he’s never even _spoken_ to the man before.

It wasn’t like Shinichi usually wasted his time on grand larceny, after all. He’s beginning to regret that now, and not just because trying to get his hands on old case files is going to be far more challenging than he’s used to.

Shinichi lingers just outside the station while he considers his options, sun and moon both high and grey in the sky behind a slowly gathering veil of clouds and washing the whole area in a sort of feigned monochrome palate. He shivers, glares balefully up at the sky, and attempts to bury his face entirely into the collar of his coat with no real success. “Anymore bright ideas?” He mutters into the scratching wool, not entirely sure whether he’s asking himself or his phantom.

His answer seems to come in the form of the first delicate fall of snow across his head and shoulders. In less than a minute the snow is falling fast and thick, and Shinichi rushes at the station doors with a low uttered curse, too preoccupied with imagining the inevitable lecture he’ll receive from Ran for going out in the snow so soon after such a close call to notice someone coming out from the same doors before they’ve both collided solidly with each other, sending the papers in the other person’s hands fluttering to the damp ground.

“Sorry!” Shinichi shouts, immediately dropping into a crouch to help the other person gather up their papers. “I was just trying to get out of the—“ And then freezes utterly in place when the word ‘phantom’ catches his eyes on one of the papers in his hand. Slowly, he drags his gaze up to find himself staring across at Hakuba Saguru, a fellow high school detective and one of the primary witnesses for Kaitou Kid being shot from the sky on the night of his final recorded appearance. “—snow.” He stumbles back up to his feet in a surge of energy that very nearly feels like irritation, papers crinkling slightly in his hands as he casts a leery eye up at the moon peering coyly down from the partial cover of a dark grey cloud and uttering a low, “smart ass,” up at it for lack of any better target at the moment.

“I beg your pardon?” Hakuba says sharply as he stands as well, looking more than a bit ruffled, and Shinichi grimaces at being caught between the equally unappealing option of allowing Hakuba to think the comment had been directed at _him_ or admitting to talking to the moon.

He does a bit of quick thinking and settles on a slightly more acceptable third option. “Sorry, not you, thinking through a problem aloud. _Actually_ ,” He narrows his eyes at Hakuba, taps his chin with a finger from the hand that isn’t holding the other teen detective’s documents. Acts like he’s only just recognized Hakuba now. “You might be able to help me with it. You _are_ Hakuba Saguru, aren’t you?”

Hakuba narrows his own eyes at Shinichi, answering with a stiff, wary, “I am.”

“And you used to work pretty closely with the police on the Kaitou Kid case, right?” Shinichi forces a smile on his face, tries to emulate the easy, casual, and ultimately generic friendly aura Heiji manages to use to get suspects eager to start talking, but if the dubious expression on Hakuba’s face is any indication he falls a little short of that goal. His mother would give him such a lecture on his acting abilities if she could see him now.

“I did.” Hakuba says, voice somehow colder than the wind blowing insistent flurries of snow down the collar of his coat right now.

Shinichi hunches his shoulders down against the chill and barrels on, determined to use this opportunity to get a few more answers (even if it means potentially alienating himself with a fellow contemporary, apparently). “Excellent, because I’ve been looking into the case of his disappearance lately and it became clear to me pretty quickly that I didn’t have enough familiarity with the phantom thief in general to get very far with just the information available to the public. And I was hoping that _you_ could—“

“Why?”

“…sorry?” Shinichi deflates slightly at having the pace of his patter to come to an abrupt stop at the stern interruption.

“Why are you looking into the case suddenly, after a year.” The other boy demands. “I know who you are, Kudo Shinichi, and I know you never bother with grand larceny, you said so yourself. Kid was ultimately ruled missing, not dead, and there hasn’t been any new evidence in the past year to support challenging that decision at all, _I would know_.” For all the ice in his voice, there’s fire in his eyes, and he takes a step forward into Shinichi’s space in a clearly threatening manner courtesy of that extra bulk from his mixed heritage. Shinichi does his best to stand his ground. “So I want to know why you’re interested in this case _now_ , Kudo. What do you know.”

Shinichi makes a very conscious decision not to step back, shoving his free hand in his coat pocket and offering up a shrug. “Nothing I’m comfortable discussing with anyone just yet.” Or ever really. “But I am curious to know why the case never made it over to homicide, didn’t you report witnessing him being shot down? It seems a little presumptuous to rule him as simply missing under those circumstances without at least asking for a consultation from the homicide department, don’t you think? And _I_ would have known if you had.” He adds, calling back to the other detective’s own bold assertion earlier.

Hakuba makes an irritable huff of sound and steps back away from Shinichi himself (and Shinichi doesn’t want to admit it, but he breathes a little sigh of relief at the reprieve, apparently Nakamouri-keibu isn’t the only detective that has a tendency to get a little too riled up when it comes to Kaitou Kid). “He’s been shot at during other heists and managed to turn up later just as energetic and infuriating. He’s even gone on an eight year hiatus without warning before. There’s no reason for this instance to be any different really.”

“Did the task force make a habit of shooting at non-violent criminals?” Shinichi asks with a small frown. “That doesn’t seem like it would be standard policy.”

“It wasn’t the _police_ shooting at Kid.” Hakuba answers in a rather unfairly cryptic (but understandably defensive) manner, apparently in no real hurry to explain himself further.

Shinichi decides to try for a different tack entirely. “If there’s no new information, then why are you carrying around documents on Kid—“ He begins shuffling through the paperwork in his hand under the artifice of concern, roughly scanning the pages for any details that jump out at him. “—are these official police files? Are you even allowed to have these out here?”

Hakuba snatches the sheets out from Shinichi’s hands so quick he gets papercuts from it, as well as three names of interest: Snake (which is more than likely a handle of some kind), Koizumi, and Kaito, spelled like the constellation rather than the thief. “Not that it’s any of your business,” The other boy says with all the carefully controlled measure of a person who is currently one wrong word away from snapping and doing something they’ll more than likely regret. “But those are my own notes on a different case regarding a missing classmate.”

Despite the all too obvious risk of setting Hakuba off, there’s one, troubling detail that he just can’t let the answer lie without getting cleared up first. “I definitely saw the word phantom thief on one of those sheets though, do you think Kid has something to do with your friend’s disappearance?”

Something seems to physically snap behind Hakuba’s eyes and a moment later he’s shoving past Shinichi without a word, his suitably appropriate stalk arrested abruptly by his feet flying out from under him as he hits an icy patch of sidewalk and tumbles to the ground in an impressive splay of limbs.

He’s up again and storming down the street in seconds with a red face and dark expression, but all of Shinichi’s attention is currently leveled at the single sheet of paper that had flown out of Hakuba’s hands when he fell, apparently without his noticing. Shinichi doesn’t move or even breathe until the other detective has disappeared around the corner before he’s dropping to his knees to rescue the paper from the snow-covered step and carefully dusting it off before giving it a close perusal.

It appears to be some sort of data sheet about a boy from Hakuba’s class named Kuroba Kaito, written in Hakuba’s own handwriting, just as the other boy had insisted. By all appearance, it’s just a normal bio sheet with things like height, weight, hair and eye color, age and blood type, but it’s when the sheet starts to get into skills and hobbies that Shinichi’s interest is truly piqued. As well as the subject’s last known location: a Kaitou Kid heist. Kaitou Kid’s _last_ heist.

He casts another long-suffering glance up at the moon overhead, almost entirely visible in the sky despite the veritable swarm of dark clouds drifting above now. “Enough, I’ve got it already.” Shinichi mutters in a voice that he can’t quite manage to sound irritated. “I’ve got it.”

* * *

 

The empty lot behind Tropical Land at night is a different experience entirely from the day, and not an altogether pleasant one. No distant sounds of life from the main park to wash over him, no weak sun rays splashing down through the beams and girders to break up the thick and ominous shadows. Which only serves to make the contrast of the moon’s glow reflecting off the winter landscape before him even more stark and unnerving.

Snow has been falling thick and heavy since Shinichi’s encounter with Hakuba at the police station, and lies several inches thick on the ground; the vast stretch of clean, undisturbed snow before him now suggesting that no one else has visited the lot since Shinichi’s own investigation early this morning.

Kaitou Kid stands firmly in the center of it all, cape whipping at his back from the wind and hat tipped low to obscure all but the cutting edge of a smile on his face. Dark red blooms in a small, circular patch on his chest, like a rose set in a lapel.

Shinichi pauses just on the edge of the perimeter to take all this in, to catch his breath. Chasing after the scattered remnants of a phantom all day somehow fails entirely to prepare him for actually _confronting_ said phantom, and he has to steel himself against implausibility (fantasy) before he can take a step into the lot and ruin that perfect, untouched landscape. And then he takes another. And another.

“You’re a hard guy to track down, Kuroba Kaito.” Shinichi says as he walks out to meet the thief in the center, with a phrase he _definitely_ hasn’t been rehearsing his entire way here. Or at least, no one can prove he has, which is practically the same thing.

Kid, or rather, Kuroba, tilts his head back to meet Shinichi’s eyes, mouth curving into a distinctly pleased shape, something ageless about his face despite Shinichi being all too aware that the thief is actually _younger_ than him. Though whether that’s due to Kid’s penchant for disguises or the fact that he’s apparently dead, Shinichi really can’t say. “And you’ve been a very busy detective.” He answers, humor dancing through every word.

“Don’t pretend you weren’t helping me with Hakuba.” He says blandly, rolling his eyes. “You were hardly subtle.”

“No one should have to deal with Hakuba on their own.”

The buzzing tension that’s been thrumming through his body since he woke up this morning in the hospital and started arguing with himself over the validity of his own memories sloughs off him in waves as he looks at the thief (confirms his existence with his own eyes), and exhaustion slowly settles over him like a layer of snow in its place. Trudging through the shin high snow doesn’t help any with the exhaustion, but he clears off a patch on a nearby beam and sits, huddling down against the pervading chill. “I take it you two weren’t friends in school then.” He says, leaving the assumption open for Kid to expand or snap shut as he pleases.

Kid’s only acknowledgement of Shinichi’s journey to the middle of the lot is spinning slightly on his heel to continue facing him directly, hands still left disarmingly in his pockets. “Not in the strictest definition, no, but he always meant well, in the end.” He exhales softly through his nose and it could be derision or laughter or, far more likely from Shinichi’s admittedly limited exposure to him thus far, some amalgamation of both, and he adds liltingly, “Even if he didn’t realize it himself at the time.”

“He was certainly protective enough of you when I was asking questions earlier.” Shinichi complains, rubbing one gloved hand against his nose to warm it and ultimately leaving the hand there in equal measure to shield his face from the wind and prevent Kid from seeing the grin that surfaces as he adds, “I was genuinely concerned I was going to wind up having to explain to Megure-keibu why I was involved in a fist fight on the steps of the station if I pushed too far.”

“Wrestling.” Kid counters, almost idly.

“Sorry?”

The thief sketches a very put upon expression across his face, exaggerated to the point of dramatics when he specifies, “Hakuba doesn’t box, he wrestles. Quite well actually. It figures really, wrestling is such an old man sport and he _does_ like to dress like he’s a retired professor in his sixties.”

Shinichi is all too aware that his hand can’t be doing him any favors in disguising the sheer delight he’s experiencing at this outflow of information but he also couldn’t possibly care less right now. “He pinned you at a lot at heists, didn’t he?”

“Once at school too.” Kid confirms mournfully.

He allows himself a few bright, airy seconds of laughter at the altogether far too satisfying image his words provoke before another gust of icy wind cuts through him all the way down to his bones and he’s grinding his teeth and checking to make sure he isn’t bleeding, the pain is so visceral.

Kaitou Kid’s expression morphs into something more genuinely regretful before he casts a look up at the moon, then down to the small piles of snow that have built up on Shinichi’s shoulders as they conversed. “We should cut this short, you don’t need to be out in this weather so soon after your encounter.”

Shinichi stubbornly buries a cough into the wool of his gloves. “I sort of got the impression after today that the snow was _your_ doing.” He says flatly. “You could always try practicing a bit of restraint, as foreign as that concept probably is for you.”

The shrug Kid offers him in response is oddly hesitant, from what he’s seen of the thief thus far. “It’s complicated.” He says, softly, and nothing more.

“You’ve been dragging me around by my nose _all day_ to get to this point, you don’t get to stonewall me with ‘complicated’ now.” He insists, standing and taking one purposeful step toward Kid that sends the other boy reeling back a good three feet in response. It’s the first uncontrolled movement from the thief he’s seen since meeting the other boy, and Shinichi can’t reason out why.

“It’s not stonewalling!” Kid protests, voice going a little shrill and eyes taking on a distinctly hunted look that stops Shinichi in his tracks. “Getting you to believe enough to get to this point was hard enough, neither of us have the time for me to try and explain the rules of magic to a critic right now!”

“Magic.” Shinichi echoes, unable to hide the derision in his voice.

“See!” Kid’s voice is like a frozen lake cracking down the center, fragile spiderwebs shattering out from the epicenter to create a hundred new tiny fissures that crack and spread in turn, and Shinichi almost misses what the other boy says next because he’s so busy listening to the aftershocks. “You’re talking to a dead guy but the word magic still manages to send you into conniptions, you’re not ready for that particular heart to heart yet, trust me.”

“You’re asking me to trust a criminal.” Shinichi can’t help but point out, dubious.

The look Kaitou Kid levels at him is bleak. “A criminal responsible for making sure that there weren’t _two_ dead people standing in this lot right now instead of one.”

And just like that, all the fight drains out of Shinichi like he’s a sieve. “You’re asking a lot from me, you realize that right?” He asks, nearly _begs_ the other boy to understand. How easy it would have been for Shinichi to use the easy excuse of head trauma to dismiss their first meeting as a fantasy or fever dream, how easy it would have been to let that be their last meeting as well. How easy it would have been for Shinichi to simply _give up_ at any point during the long and frustrating day, and go back home- to turn his attention to more sensible matters.

How much more Kid is asking of him with that one little word.

“I’m afraid I’m not quite done asking for things from you, at that.” Kid tells him wryly, only the faintest hint of sheepishness to be found in the way his gloved fingers flutter briefly at the lapel of his jacket before disappearing back into his pants pockets. “I find myself in need of a very particular skill set that you happen to possess in spades, you see.”

“You want me to teach you how to juggle a soccer ball.” Shinichi says blandly, for no other reason than to discourage the thief from wasting both their time with flowery insinuations when he could just speak plainly instead. And wonder of wonder, it actually works.

 “I want you to solve my murder.”


End file.
